Ya-Ya-yah Kinpachi Trio Haru Yasumi Yokohama Arena Concert '05
On Saturday, March 26 2005, Ya-Ya-yah held two concerts at Yokohama Arena, one at 2pm and one at 5:30pm. I left my hotel in Tokyo at around 11am and took the train to Yokohama. I arrived at Shin Yokohama Station at 12:30pm, a half hour before the doors at Yokohama Arena were opened.
To find the Arena was very easy. From the station I just had to follow the hundreds of girls with their uchiwas and self-designed shopping bags showing pictures of Yabu, Taiyo, Hikaru and Shoon.
This is the north side of Yokohama Arena. You can already see people queuing:
Below: the main entrance.
The people in the front are the end of the queue that goes all the way to the back of the arena...
and from there all the way back to the front...
Once inside the Arena I took a few pictures of the stage with my mobile phone camera and stichted them together afterwards to get this panoramic view of the Arena:
At 2pm the lights went out, music started to play and Tanaka Koki entered the stage and began introducing the main act. First Yabu, then Taiyo and finally Hikaru. Nakajima Yuto of J.J.Express then gave Hikaru his Junior High School diploma, the one that Hikaru couldn't get the night before on Kinpachi Sensei because the judge wouldn't let him out of jail to attend the ceremony with his classmates.
Then the concert was about to begin when suddenly Shoon's voice came over the PA, asking Tanaka if he hadn't forgotten someone. Tanaka looked puzzled and them Shoon shouted: "Yamashita Shoon desu!!!"
And then it really started. Loud music, 15.000 screaming fans waving their uchiwas and penlights and Ya-Ya-yah performing their new song "Start!" I almost started to cry. But hey, not me. At least not in public.
It was a great Show with many guests. Kame, Tanaka, Taguchi and Ueda from Kat-tun, Toshin Yoshikazu with ABC, Question, Kis-My-Ft, J.J.Express. There were over 50 juniors alltogether and they performed all your favorite songs, from "Sekai ga hitotsu ni naru made" to "Naniwa Iroha Bushi." They even performed the "Soran bushi", the traditional dance that had also played an important part in Kinpachi Sensei.
Here's the only picture that I could take during the concert (because taking photos was of course strictly prohibited and I didn't want to take the risk of being thrown out). You really can't see a lot on it, because it was dark in the Arena and very bright on the stage, too much for my camera to handle properly. But anyway, it's a great souvenir.
After 2 hours and one encore it was over. 15.000 happy people left the Arena and when I was outside I lined up in the queue that had already formed to get in for the 2nd concert. And the 2nd concert was even better. I had a better seat, there were better MCs and there were three encores instead of just one. This time Masuda, Tegoshi and Koyama of NEWS were special guests. In the end when they all made their final round to wave goodbye to the fans I made eye contact with Taiyo, Hikaru and Shoon. Not Yabu, though. But it was so cute to see him running around and waving to the fans with a great big grin on his face... He surely had the time of his life.
But the thing that mattered to me the most was that I saw Shoon and he saw me, even though he didn't smile at me or waved back when I gave him the V-sign. But there will be more opportunities for him to do that in the future, because after the concert it was announced that the next Ya-Ya-yah concert will be in August. Oh well......